Ever seen a sign that says “Find us on Facebook”?

It has to be one of the most aggravating marketing calls to action.

Find you? You mean, type your business name, or its nearest approximation, into the search box of Facebook?  And then you want us to assess the results, do some filtering, reject listings that aren’t related to you, reject any groups or community pages  or places, until we may (fingers crossed) find your business on Facebook? <sarcasm font> that doesn’t sound difficult at all </sarcasm font>

You don’t ask customers to “find us on King William Street” or “Google our website” do you? “Look up our number in the White Pages”?

With approximately the same number of characters you’ve used to tell us to “Find us on Facebook” you could have given us your actual Facebook URL.

Life would be so much easier if Mars Coffee Bar said “Join us at facebook.com/MarsCoffeeBar”. Don’t you think?

Grab your Facebook URL

Sometimes the problem is that a business doesn’t have a vanity URL on Facebook. They are easy to acquire, by visiting www.facebook.com/username

Of course, your exact business name may have been claimed by another Facebook user. So you’ll have to go through different iterations. You might try MarsCoffeeAus for example.

Grabbing people’s attention is a battle. If you have it, you need to make it supremely easy for them to take additional steps such as connecting with you on Facebook. Don’t ask people to seek or type in addresses. So:

• Grab your Facebook URL
• Spell out your Facebook URL in marketing collateral
• Hyperlink your Facebook URL to your Facebook logos

Read Facebook’s brand and logo guidelines to make sure you comply with Facebook’s  permissions. It’s interesting to note that they’ve encouraged people not to hyperlink to the Facebook login page, so I take this as another vote for hyperlinking direct to your vanity URL.